Monthly Archives: July 2017

but you won’t stop. I know that about people like you. Rarely do I even get a chance to say anything before your hand is grating against my body – unwanted, unwelcome.

I don’t know why it keeps happening. I don’t know what about my body makes it seem like communal property. I just don’t understand. But it always hurts, it aches, I feel every single goddamn hand from every motherfucker who violated me before you. I don’t sleep for awhile. I leave a little too often to get sick in the bathroom. I cry in my boyfriend’s arms and try to piece the night together.

Maybe it’s time for a change.

Maybe this time, when you touch me and my skin burns and my mind goes blank, maybe this time I’ll repay violence with violence. I’m granting myself permission.

If your hands are on my body without consent, I will take them. I will unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole, I will yank you into the nightmares that keep me up at night – of hands and loss and fear. I will take no prisoners. And then, when I have made myself unforgettable, I will fucking leave. Let me crawl the road to your childhood home with your hands in tow. I will bring them home to your mother, all skin and tendons and blood, and I will tell her about the monster she has raised – that she will bury. And I will go home and I’ll sleep soundly at night.

And I want to write something but it’s still stuck in my jaw, a burden too heavy to carry and too personal to abandon. What else can you do in the renovation process? Either I’ll get stronger or it’ll get easier. That’s survival.

Two summers ago, I was crashing and burning in an abusive relationship. One summer ago, I tasted happiness and didn’t know if I could bear to see it change.

And now?

I smile more than I thought possible. I’m planting roots in a city I had never before loved. I finally have room to breathe and I relearned how to laugh and I cut out as much poison as I could without erasing everywhere I’ve been. I never knew healing could be so…consuming. So freeing. So completely and overwhelmingly terrifying, at points.

thank you for your patience with me. Sometimes, just having a little space for words and thoughts makes all the difference, and I am so grateful.